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09/08/2014

ELCA Young Adults Begin Year-long Journey of Global Service

CHICAGO (ELCA) – Sixty-three young adults from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) have begun a year-long journey in which they will “live and learn and serve” with ELCA companion churches and partner organizations around the world. The young adults are participants in the ELCA’s Young Adults in Global Mission program – an international mission opportunity for young people from the ages of 21 to 29.

“The Young Adults in Global Mission program is, for me, among the clearest examples of why it matters that we are church together,” said the Rev. Heidi Torgerson-Martinez, program director for the ELCA Young Adults in Global Mission.
“Our Young Adults in Global Mission volunteers often find themselves deeply humbled by the ways that the ELCA rises up around them as they prepare to deploy for service. Through financial gifts, prayers, letters from Sunday school (students) at a church they’d never heard of, and a thousand other acts of faithful kindness, ELCA synods, congregations and members are wrapping our Young Adults in Global Mission volunteers in support,” said Torgerson-Martinez.

The Young Adults in Global Mission program started in 1999, with eight young adults who volunteered in the United Kingdom. Since then, almost 500 young adults have traveled to locations that include Africa, Asia, Mexico, the Middle East and South America, where they volunteer 35 to 40 hours a week at a variety of placement sites including churches, schools and hospitals.

“In my faith thus far in my life, I have had moments where I feel a nudge to do something,” said Joseph Young, a member of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Waukegan, Ill., who is currently serving in Mexico. “I am always thinking what more can I be doing with my life? How can I contribute to the world? I believe that all of us have a moral obligation to make the world a better place.”

Although the young adult volunteers assist with the work of ELCA companions churches and organizations in the countries where they serve, what they gain from the experience is often much more valuable.
“Our Young Adults in Global Mission volunteers do, without question, provide critical service in communities around the world. But what they share and receive through their experience is so much deeper than simply traveling to another country to help out,” said Torgerson-Martinez.

“At its core, the Young Adults in Global Mission experience is about learning to live in deep mutual relationship with others from whom the Young Adult in Global Mission volunteer is very different,” Torgerson-Martinez emphasized. “It’s about discovering what it means to hold less tightly to Western ideas of success, progress and development, and instead lean into one’s own vulnerability. It’s about seeking and finding the face of God in people and places where most would never think to look. It’s about learning how to follow Jesus, whose life and ministry were characterized by radical relationships of love,” she said.

Sarah Brock, from Zion Lutheran Church in Litchfield, Minn., is one of six young adults serving in Rwanda, where the program is in its first year. The Lutheran Church in Rwanda was established by refugees who returned to Rwanda from Tanzania where they fled to escape the genocide that killed more than 1 million people in 1994. In her Aug. 26 blog post, Brock describes meeting the congregation at Kigali Lutheran Parish.

“We didn’t look like everyone else. We didn’t speak like everyone else. We were far from home. But we didn’t feel out of place. ‘We have been waiting for you,’ said one of the men of the congregation as he shook my hand,” wrote Brock.
Brock went on to describe the words of welcome from the Rev. Evariste Mugabo, bishop of the Lutheran Church in Rwanda.

“He told the congregation that we had left our parents, so now they needed to be our parents. He told the youth that many of us had left behind brothers and sisters, so now they needed to be our brothers and sisters. Looking at us he said, ‘We will be your parents, your pastors, your bishop.’ As he continued his sermon, he talked about unity. He shared his excitement about building this relationship between the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America and the Lutheran Church of Rwanda. He addressed the six of us directly and urged us to work hard so that our time here would be a testimony to the future of this relationship,” Brock wrote.

“These (ELCA) global companions are truly stepping out in faith when they say ‘yes’ to welcoming a group of young Westerners into their midst,” said Torgerson-Martinez. “They give so freely of themselves and model a kind of hospitality that most of our Young Adults in Global Mission had never dreamed possible. Simply put, the Young Adults in Global Mission program would not be possible were it not for each of us – here and around the world – living into the call to be church together.”

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